Effectively Wild Episode 1628: What MLB’s Remaking of the Minors Means
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2020
⏱️ 83 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about and the Phillies’ surprise hiring of Dave Dombrowski as their president of baseball operations, then (15:04) bring on Baseball America executive editor J.J. Cooper to talk about the ongoing overhaul of the minor leagues, the history of the relationship between the majors and minors, why MLB sought to consolidate its control over amateur ball and the minor leagues, the impact of the pandemic, the pending improvements in conditions for minor leaguers, the virtues of amateur ball versus affiliated ball, minor league owners as sympathetic figures, how the 120 affiliated teams were determined, efficiency vs. access to the sport, and whether baseball will be better or worse off in the long run.
Audio intro: Whitney, "Dave’s Song"
Audio interstitial: The Strokes, "Under Control"
Audio outro: The Orange Peels, "Take Me Over"
Link to Jayson Stark on the Phillies hiring Dombrowski
Link to a compendium of J.J.’s coverage
Link to J.J. on the 120 teams announcement
Link to Evan Drellich on the 120 teams announcement
Link to J.J. on how the 120 teams were chosen
Link to J.J. on what’s next for excluded teams
Link to J.J. on expanded player limits
Link to J.J. on the Staten Island Yankees lawsuit
Link to J.J. on the new amateur leagues
Link to J.J. on the origins of short-season ball
Link to J.J. on minor league player expenses
Link to J.J. on minor league facility upgrades
Link to Baseball America podcast
Link to preorder the Baseball America 2021 Prospect Handbook
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Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And I don't want to know what I should do |
| 0:07.0 | I know it's hard to give up when I don't want to be saved |
| 0:15.0 | Take me in your heart again |
| 0:20.0 | And I know how to keep your heart up when I won't do it again |
| 0:28.0 | Don't you go and leave me in my friend |
| 0:33.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 1628 of Effectively Wild |
| 0:36.0 | A Fangraft Spaceball Podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters |
| 0:39.0 | I'm Meg Rally, a Fangrafts and I'm joined as always by Ben Lumberga of the Rain |
| 0:44.0 | Ben, how are you? |
| 0:45.0 | Happy to be here, how are you? |
| 0:47.0 | I'm happy to be here too |
| 0:48.0 | Good, well this is our promised minor league restructuring episode |
| 0:52.0 | Yeah |
| 0:53.0 | We're gonna make sense of what exactly is happening here and we do that with the help of J.J. Cooper of baseball America |
| 1:00.0 | Who has been all over this subject from the start and really I think this conversation is helpful for me as his work has been |
| 1:08.0 | Just because I feel like I'm still forming my opinion about what all of this means is it good? |
| 1:14.0 | Is it bad? |
| 1:15.0 | What are the implications here? |
| 1:17.0 | It has been sort of oversimplified I think in ways that maybe reduce it down to its essence or maybe distort it |
| 1:25.0 | And so I just haven't really formed a concrete impression of what the long-term effects of this will be and maybe it's too soon to do that as J.J. will tell us |
| 1:34.0 | So he will lay out exactly what is happening here with various independent leagues becoming partner leagues and affiliates becoming non-affiliates |
| 1:43.0 | And some affiliates staying affiliates but moving around from team to team and level to level everything is changing really compared to what it has been for decades |
... |
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